[Hahana III Colony]

Nurse Rachel Smith moved some more ruble. It had been a day at least since she had come across anyone living with the destruction. There was still some hope, but it was fleeting. More often than not she found the signs that people had lived however briefly but by now had lost the fight. She wiped a smudge of dirt from her face, only being able to smudge it more. Moving on she saw the tall and strong Andorian Chief of Secuity digging and finding nothing as well. They worked in relative silence with none of the Starfleet crew willing to speak up in case there was sounds of survival below them. 

Pulling down a mound of ruble that she had previously been scrambling over, Smith looked at her hands now all cut and dirty. Before they arrived, back during the leisure time on Starbase 72 she had gotten a manicure and made things all nice, but now her nails were shortened by chipping and scratched. Her skin was weather beaten and damaged. Even the uniform that she wore as a Starfleet Chief Petty Officer was dirty and no longer freshly pressed like it came right out of the replicator. Lieutenant Commander Kan Th’kaotross similarly looked ragged despite maintaining the near perfect posture from a Starfleet recruitment poster. He looked like a survivor of those brutal wars against the Dominion that they made old holofilms out of. His uniform ripped and tattered, dirty, and covered in other people’s blood.

Two hours later she returned to camp, feeling her legs about to give out and needing a break. Nurse Smith nodded at the officers who were handing blankets and containers of fresh water out to survivors but said nothing. Finding a seat she grabbed a small bottle for herself and collapsed into a pile of skin, bones, and exhausted muscle. 

A young looking Lieutenant Commander came over and nodded, offering her a bar of some sort likely of pure protein power. Gratefully Smith accepted, though she was nebulous on getting all her nutrition from bars. Food was, and remained the ultimate delivery system. Bars though were efficient and easy to pack down in a shuttle for the planet’s surface.

”You okay?” Chief Operations Officer Tashai asked.

The human nurse nodded, “Tired. Angry. I guess okay is a word you can use.”

Tashai was someone that Smith had heard was routinely optimistic to a fault. A trait that Chief Medical Officer Doctor Mueller complained about quite a lot. Yet on this occasion she just nodded and did not try to convince Smith to buck up, or point out that human existence was littered with occasions like this, or anything equally as unhelpful. Instead the woman looked sympathetic and in a way very old as though she had seen more than she wanted to.

“It never feel better to see this side of us,” Tashai finally said.

Smith swore, feeling a burst of anger, “It’s not us.”

Tashai nodded, ”No, not this time.“

The woman was not wrong, which Smith knew intellectually but for some reason this made her mad beyond words as it Tashai was pinning all of this on Starfleet or on Smith herself. Feeling that burst of anger she rose and punched the Operations Chief in the face. Tashai fell like a sack of sand.

As soon as she had done it Smith felt regret, she felt her anger fade and instead felt the weight of worry having just socked a Lieutenant Commander for no real reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Footsteps approached and another Lieutenant Commander joined them, the Chief of Security Kan Tha’kaotross. He set a large strong hand on Smith’s shoulder pulling her back.

”Is everything alright,” he said glaring at Smith.

”It’s all good,” Tashai said getting up and wiping her own blood from her face, “Nurse Smith here was just showing me some self defense stuff. I wasn’t ready for it.”

Tha’kaotross looked skeptical, but Smith realized that she had to go along with the lie or face court martial of some kind. She nodded, “Yeah the right hook is tricky to avoid.”

Being given a way out of arresting the ship’s Head Nurse in an active disaster zone, the Chief of Security removed his hand and nodded, “Alright, just looked different from back a bit.“

He took a water and a bar and joined a gaggle of other security officers taking a break. Smith looked at Tashai gratefully. The woman could have ruined her life, and instead had not.

”Thank you, I shouldn’t have done that,” Smith said.

”But you did. We all do things we regret, even the Vulcans though they’ll never admit it. We’re all on edge, and it’s not who we are. We’re not people who are meant to be picking through the rubble, that’s not who any of us are,” Tashai said. She offered a shrug and then nodded, walking away holding her nose still trying to stem the tide of blood.

Sitting in silence a shuttle landed and a new batch of officers and crew came forth. Nurse Smith saw Nurse Westbrook who waived and headed out into the ruble to search. Slowly the gathered searchers entered the shuttle, tired and dirty like ghosts representing who they used to be when they touched down. A sonic shower and a long sleep was what they had to look forward to, then back to search again.

Sitting down on a padded bench in the shuttle Smith strapped in. Kan Tha’kaotross nodded, “You okay nurse?”

”Tired,” Smith said, “but alive.”

”Some days that’s all you can ask for,” the Andorian said as the last of the crew loaded in and the shuttle began its return flight to the USS Anaheim. As the world grew further and the ground view through the window was replaced with space Smith felt a little light. Nothing was better, but at least somewhere there was still hope for a better life. The colony had lost so much but they would rebuild, they would grow again and stronger this time.

Realizing that someone had not joined them Smith looked at Tha’kaotross, “Where is Commander Tashai?”

”She is not taking a shift off. She’s been there continually since we arrived, I believe she naps on cots,” he said, “She has told the Captain that she has to oversee Operations on the ground.”

“Oh,” was all Smith could answer. She lay back, her head against the cool metallic wall of the shuttle as the Anaheim loomed into view. 

Home. A crew, and safety.

All things that she had been taking for granted, and now all things that she was could be taken away with well placed torpedo.